"Fighting the Wrong Fight"

(This was originally meant to be up last night, but due to an unscheduled and non-coincidental broadband outage, I couldn't. Who am I kidding, I could have organised it the day before and forgotten about it. Anyway, enjoy)

Ok, so I'd already written about why the licence fund should under no circumstances be used to subsidise commercial tv networks, and while that seems to be still a part of the plan as outlined in the "Digital Britain" report, the rest of it I hadn't seen coming, and I say this to it. As someone who knows a lot about technology and politics, this is about as moronic as it could possibly get.

Lets start off with what I'd already discussed. While at this point in my reading of the report, it doesn't seem like the licence fee will go in any way directly toward the ITV entertainment department, £130,000,000 of the licence money will head toward the ITV regional news departments. I'm not entirely sure WHY it is that any of said money should be going toward the local news desks of the largest commercial TV provider on free-to-air TV, especially when ITV knows full well that it needs to cut down on it's outgoings. That may sound like I've just said two things that are in opposition to each other, but the thing is, if ITV feel THAT much in need to cover the local news broadcasts, why are they even doing it? Why not offer up the rights to independent providers, and spin off the current local offices? Even better, why not reduce current costs by slashing departmental costs and removing every unnecessary step of middle-management, and have them fund the damn thing themselves?

I admit it. I'm steamed right now. My preference is really not for the money that was going to the BBC, to be not only reduced on review every time the charter comes up, but also be reduced in order to pay for something a badly-run private enterprise agreed to do, in order to broadcast in the UK.

I imagine my ire will make my head explode when after a few years of the licence fee allowing ITV to cut costs, the BBC will lose out again to ITV in the Premier League highlight package deal, but the consumer still finds themselves subsidising ITV to make even bigger asses out of themselves, and out of the consumer.

The next thing, and the first thing that drew my eye when I read about it, was the new initiative to help fund broadband in hard-to-reach areas, aswell as part-fund the upgrade to what the report calls "next-generation broadband" - ie: The kind of broadband that countries like Japan and South Korea have right now, fibre-optic lines like the ones that NTL/Virgin have already installed to much of their customer base.

This is something I think is fine; In the same way that I think it's fine that no-one should be allowed to kill a unicorn.

Everybody SHOULD have broadband access. The same way everybody SHOULD have regular postal deliveries. The same way that everybody SHOULD have a phone line, be it mobile or landline.

But I'm far from convinced that a 50p/month levy on anyone who has a fixed phone line is the way to go about it. That's right, the idea is, that if you have a landline, like the one you probably only ever use for your broadband, you will have to pay fifty pence a month, to subsidise telecommunications businesses and their expansion plans. And I have no doubt that the major profiteer in this, will be BT. The very same BT that has resisted continuous attempts to open up the market, despite OFCOM's urgings. The same BT that has caused untold damage to the broadband market in the UK, described today by the author of the report as :-

"the competitive market we have in this country"

I'm sure what he meant to say is that the UK has a competitive broadband market in spite of the business that gets to arbitrarily decide which broadband customers have access to which broadband providers. I'm not joking, there have been many times when I've had to make extended phone calls to both BT and a prospective broadband provider to actually, y'know, get my paid-for broadband working, only to find that BT haven't made the broadband in my area available to the provider I wanted to go with(PIPEX & Demon, if you're interested), which meant I had little-to-no choice in the matter as to whether I wanted to sign up for BT broadband.

So yeah, apparently the best way to get broadband to members of the public that are not currently covered(Apparently it's around "one third", I'm not sure if that's one third of the population or one-third of the surface area of the UK, the report hasn't been too clear on that so far for me), is for people who already have to pay for broadband, or people who don't pay for broadband but have a landline phone, to subsidise the effort to connect up these lost souls.

Except it's not. My comparison earlier with people deserving a phone line and deserving a broadband connection deservers returning to. There are many people who have only within the last twenty-five years been able to pick up a phone and call someone. In many cases, that's something that BT simply weren't prepared to do, so the locals, using fundraising and money out of their own pocket, organised for their town/village/hamlet to be connected via a trunk line. I realise I'm speaking anecdotally here, and I'm sure that there have been measures from the government to connect up such places to the phone network in the past. But fifty pence from anyone who even has a landline phone, to help pay for broadband for someone who lives far away from the rest of society? Again, anecdotally, I've known people who have lived in such places, and I've listened to a lot of stories on the news and in shows like "Relocation, Relocation, Relocation", that if people are living in the kind of place that doesn't have broadband access, they moved there for a reason. And if they still want it after moving out there, then they can pay for it, or realise they made a silly decision when the moved, and never considered things like "Hmmm, will I need da interwebz, or am I just fine with the famous local mint cake?".

I hasten to add, I feel a healthy dose of cynicism running through me over this. I don't like the idea of myself, my friends or my family(Well, maybe my family), having to pay a legal form of taxation, to subsidise the hobbies of people who don't want to move. And it is the hobbies. I've read about the stat that says that twenty-two million Britons rely on their net access to work, I just feel that it's the same thing that every generation has to deal with, and accept: If you want the best facilities, you need to move closer to the large population centres. If you don't, then you need to come up with some way of paying for what you want to come to you.

My other feeling on this, is that if it is one third of the population that is without broadband, or without broadband that meets the minimum standard of the report - two megabits per second - then it feels an awful lot like that's an ample market to be taken up by phone line and broadband providers.

Oh, wait. That can't happen. Know why? Because BT doesn't like private phone companies connecting to their network, and BT OWN the damned network.

The final thing that gets me about the report, is something I mentioned in my previous article. Piracy. Unsurprisingly, there are any number of industry figureheads and government faces that are standing up at this point, talking to cameras or audio devices, to get out the word that piracy is wrong, and takes money out of the pockets, and food out of the mouthes of their impoverished, soot-faced, charity store cloth wearing children.

While there probably are an awful lot of people out there who do actually fit the industry stereotype of a "pirate"(Arrrr); someone who has no regard for the law, is fine with the act of stealing, and is fine with both buying and selling illegal copies down in the marketplace....there is another party to all of this, and it's a party entirely of the entertainment industry's making.

The continuing rise of technology in our lives has had an effect on how we are prepared to enjoy our culture. Be it music, podcasts, audiobooks, movies, tv shows, video podcasts or games(Although I haven't seen videogame piracy mentioned yet in the report, which doesn't surprise me), all are a significant part of our modern culture. Eschewing such debates as "Is it really culture? I mean, it's just shit, right?", on the grounds that even at the time of Shakespeare or Da Vinci, there were innumerable amounts of hack entertainers standing on corners reciting limericks for change, and people who could only just hold a piece of charcoal standing on streets offering caricatures for sale. Meaning that just because it's shit, doesn't mean its not culture. It means it's shit, but it's still part of modern culture.

Anyway, with the advent of the cassette tape, we were able to record what we wanted, either from another cassette or from some source we had lying around, like a friend beat-boxing into a cheap mic, or us doing silly voices to make our friends laugh. Then we had the video tape, which meant we were no longer at the behest of the cinema manager or television scheduler as to when we could see what we wanted to see. Re-writable discs like CD's, then DVD's and now Blu-Ray discs offer us space to transfer computerised information of any sort, in the same way as we use the wire between us and the bastard BT to check our email - we're always swapping data. Then, with the rise of the digital sound file, soon to become synonymous with the machine we'd hear it from - the mp3 file and the mp3 player - it was made obvious to us all, that if the information could be digitised, then it could be taken with us in something much more convenient to us, and we'd once again, be able to enjoy it in the way that we preferred, when we prefer it.

As the mp3 revolution gained pace, it found a leader. Admittedly a leader not everyone agrees with, but still the leader - the iPod. I'm not going to discuss the benefits/restrictions that come with an iPod, I only bring it up to rightfully point out that the iPod was the tool that enabled us to really witness the change in lifestyle it represented. I've not always had iPods, and I know plenty of others who resent them(For the battery life, mostly(This part was for you, Ash and Evs), but the word "iPod" has risen to such a level, that many people will use "iPod" to describe any mp3 player, or the more recently developed personal media player, or PMP. The PMP is around about where we are right now. Again, the easiest one to explain this with, is the iPhone, but the Sony PSP is another example of PMP technology - a handheld device that will play back any and all audio or video it is capable of, AT YOUR DISCRETION. It is at this stage in time, where even the providers of most of the content for these PMPs - legitimate or not - describe themselves as just that.

"Content Providers".

Gone is the line between the tv broadcast and the LP, the dividing line between the radio station and the movie projector - it can all be digital content, to be managed and used in any number of ways. And this is because of it being "digital".

Now, as I went on in detail about the ass-backwards nature of TV networks as content providers last time around, it behooves me to be a little briefer this time. They're ludicrously ass-backwards. And not just the TV networks, the record companies and film companies are completely wretched when it comes to their record on dragging their heels. About the only difference has been that the music industry has been about four years ahead of the video content makers/owners. However, both are desperate to cling to their current method of business. The music costs as much as it does, not because that's how much the artists need from each sale, its that's how much it needs to be to pay all the different levels of bureaucracy within the music industry, and still make a profit for said levels of bureaucracy and the shareholders in the company. I don't know that the music industry has changed dramatically in the last ten years, but since I last saw the kind of contract breakdown on how much money from the sale of a CD went to a band in 1998, I'd be surprised if the amount made by any artist is that much.

The TV industry needs you to watch their content on the TV, so that you can be witness to the ads they make their money from. And then after that, they'd rather you saw it by paying for it via a DVD or these days an over-priced online download. Unless you've recorded it on a VHS, DVD recorder, or Tivo-like box that uses a hard drive(See Sky+ and V+), in which case it's fine, and you can skip the ads with those. Again, the amount of money it costs to make and sell a DVD, or a legal download, is insignificant to the amount of money it costs us to buy it. I'm not talking by a little, it's a vast mark-up, especially on the downloads - which are of DVD or lesser quality and feature no extras, despite usually costing a LOT more than the DVD's.

It all comes down to paying the middleman.

And I'm not averse to it.

But when the middleman has sat back while the world has gotten more and more used to being able to experience their culture in their own way, at their own time, in their own choice of place, to place such ludicrous restrictions on content is not only farcical, it's borderline criminal.

For the middleman to preach that piracy ruins the careers of artists, while record company executive officers run similarly scaled bonuses and wage packets as the recently bailed out bank executives, is criminal.

For people who are willing to obey the law, but find themselves resorting to illegal downloads when there is no place in the country for those people to find the perfectly legal content they require, and are then treated in the same manner as drug addicts because the companies never intended to keep up with what consumers wanted, is criminal.

Actually, the drug addict comparison is a fairly accurate one. Whenever the argument over what should be done with the problem of drug addiction in any country arises, it always comes down to one fight.

Treatment vs. Enforcement. Time in rehab versus time in prison. But as someone who has had no compunction using a variety of substances - beginning with the tobacco and caffeine they're using right now - to fill a hole in their lives, I feel empowered to say this.

You're fighting the wrong fight.

People don't just get addicted, it comes from a deep place within, and either an unwillingness to help themselves, or an inability to see where the problem comes from. And this? This is precisely the problem. Instead of looking to provide versatile, flexible, easily available cultural media that can be played on a large variety of devices, so as to meet their customer's needs, the chase continues to stamp the genie back into the bottle. And if this trend continues, then the proposed legislation and enforcement powers alluded to today, will drive illegal downloads further underground, to the point of being compared to drug dealers.

And that, is the wrong fight.